Monsieur
Petit, The Chef De Cuisine, Had Surpassed Himself, Like Vatel,
I Imagine He Would Have Committed Suicide Had He Failed To Achieve The
Triumph By Which He Intended To Elicit Our Praise.
Nothing could
exceed in magnificence, in sumptuousness this repast - such was the
opinion not only of Canadians, for whom
Such displays were new, but
also of the European guests, though there was a slight drawback to the
perfect enjoyment of the dishes - the materials which composed them
we could not recognize, so great was the artistic skill, so
wonderful the manipulations of Monsieur Petit, the French cook.
"The Bishops left about half an hour after dinner, when dancing was
resumed with an increasing ardor, but the cruel mammas were getting
concerned respecting certain sentimental walks which the daughters
were enjoying after sunset. They ordered them home, if not with their
menacing attitude with which the goddess Calypso is said to have
spoken to her nymphs, at least with frowns; so said the gay young
cavaliers. By nine o'clock, all had re-entered Quebec."
When Spencer Wood became the gubernatorial residence, its owner (the late
Hy. Atkinson) reserved the smaller half, Spencer Grange, some forty acres,
divided off by a high brick wall and fence, and terminating to the east in
a river frontage of one acre. A small latticed bower facing the St.
Lawrence overhangs the cliff, close to where the Belle Borne rill - nearly
dry during the summer months - rushes down the bank to Spencer Cove, in
spring and autumn, - a ribbon of fleecy whiteness. To the south, it is
bounded by Woodfield, and reaches to the north at a point opposite the
road called Stuart's road which intersects Holland farm, leading from the
St. Lewis to the Ste. Foye highway. The English landscape style was
adopted in the laying out of the flower garden and grounds; some majestic
old trees were left here and there through the lawns; three clumps of
maple and red oak in the centre of the meadows to the west of the house
grouped for effect; fences, carefully hidden away in the surrounding
copses; hedges, buildings, walks and trees brought in here and there to
harmonize with the eye and furnish on a few acres a perfect epitome of a
woodland scene. The whole place is girt round by a zone of tall pine,
beech, maple and red oaks, whose deep green foliage, when lit up by the
rays of the setting or rising sun, assume tints of most dazzling
brightness, - emerald wreaths dipped into molten gold-overhanging under a
leafy arcade, a rustic walk, which zigzags round the property, following
to the southwest the many windings of the Belle Borne streamlet. This
sylvan region most congenial to the tastes of a naturalist, echoes in
spring and summer with the ever-varying and wild minstrelsy of the robin,
the veery, the songsparrow, the red-start, the hermit-thrush, the red-eyed
flycatcher and other feathered choristers, while the golden-winged
woodpecker or rain fowl, heralds at dawn the coming rain of the morrow,
and some crows, rendered saucy by protection, strut through the sprouting
corn, in their sable cassocks, like worldly clergymen computing their
tythes.
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